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Optical Stun Ray

...newly patented device can render an assailant helpless with a brief flash of high-intensity light. It works by overloading the neural networks connected to the retina, saturating the target’s world in a blinding pool of white light. "It’s the inverse of blindness—the technical term is a loss of contrast sensitivity," says Todd Eisenberg, the engineer who invented the device. "The typical response is for the person to freeze. Law enforcement can easily walk up and apprehend [the suspect]."

Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears without crying
Now I want to understand
I have done all that I could
To see the evil and the good without hiding
You must help me if you can

While flashbangs work, a large part of that is the concussion. Not sure if 'just' a flash will be able to disable a target anywhere near as well.

Also - reflective surfaces will have interesting secondary effects unless the user is protected somehow, and once it's been used any 3rd party observers will see the defenses used, and it's back to the arms race we go.

There is work going back on "non lethal light weapons" for many many years (over 25years to my knowledge).

There are two basic types that I'm aware of one unpleasant the other down right nasty.

The unplesant one uses an intence light to overload the optical sensors in the eye and use up the visual purple, the result is to leave the person in a blank world.

For those who have been screened for diabetic retinopothy you will be aware of this when the camera flash is used to take the picture of your retina.

A second system is much more unpleasent and can induce fits vomiting and unconciousness.

We are probably all aware of the messages given with films and televison programes "warning the following contains flashing images..."

Well the bad news is we are all prone to being attacked by our optic nerves, if a high intesity light source is shone in the eyes and is modulated by certain wave forms it can cause significant disruption in the brain to induce certain states.

There is also a third trick which is to use just out of ordinary visable light at either the IR or UV ends of the band as this gets into the retina but does not always induce the protection mechanisums of flinching or closing down of the iris etc.

I'm not sure which camp these devices work in, but research done in the UK could cause a pig to vomit and or collapse at well over 50meters (a similar device using two achostic microwave sources could induce unconsciousness and death at well over six times that distance).

For some reason the research funding in the 1980's for "non leathal weapons" for crowd control etc dried up, and the likes of the UK's Defence Evaluation and Research Establishment got privatised (it became QinetiQ after a real knock down price sale and made certain people extrodinarily wealthy).

But simply it's an over sized flash lamp using an arc light which is highly comutated.

As the UK's Met Police photographic squad know, you can buy 1 million candle power flash lamps that with just the tiniest of adjustment produce a similar beam of light. They discovered some years ago that on some marches people did not like their photos being taken and the photo squad felt themselves under attack when six or eight of these flash lamps were shone in their faces and digital cameras.

One of the reasons the Met Photo Squad are so hated is that they were set up to make a profit, in that the Met Police have been known to sell the photographs and attendant personal details to various private security concernces, which were then used as "psudo evidence" against the people to try and effect their livelyhood, liberty and assets.

Yet another patent troll, or someone who hasn't taken the time to look into existing "prior art" or visit a rave party. Although it sounds pretty cool, I for one have always been more of a fan of sound weaponry that can be equally effective and much more amusing. We once figured out how to use sound to make someone soil himself and then subsequently applied it in the recording studio to an irritating guitar player in order to reduce his ego to more workable proportions. With success.

Reminds me of a favorite Gahan Wilson cartoon. View is a patent examiner's office, examiner standing next to a window, holding a Flash (ahem) Gordon carbine-ish thing, and as he looks down at the sidewalk, says to the inventor ``Death ray, fiddlesticks. It doesn't even slow them up.''

Prior art from 1954: "Rear Window" by Alfred Hitchcock features a scene in which Jimmy Stewart's character uses powerful flash bulbs (before electronic flash became common) to blind and disorientate an intruder.

Also a throwaway (along with the ice bullet) in Afred Bester's 1952 "The Demolished Man". Albeit the proposed mechanism of action was bleaching of photoreceptors rather than overloading (yeah, sure) of neural networks.

BK Skinner: Love the "Big Trouble in Little China" reference! One of my favorite flicks of all time set right here in San Francisco.

With reference to the device, lots of people buy high-intensity flashlights for self-defense. Martial artists who specialize in effective street self-defense warn that these things are next to worthless against an experienced street fighter who is likely to attack you by surprise and not give you any chance to pull the thing out.

"The typical response is for the person to freeze. Law enforcement can easily walk up and apprehend [the suspect]."

He expects a street criminal, blind or not, to freeze when he hears the sirens? I think not. Also, assailants tend not to assail when there are cops close enough by to just walk up on them. It's a stupid remark. There's no "easy" involved here.

"it's an over sized flash lamp"

Yeah, I carry that in my back pocket every day...not.

Such devices may have their uses under certain circumstances or possibly could be scaled up for crowd control. But there are very few "non-lethal" defenses that actually work against experienced criminals. Generally, you either need a gun (with training) or a knife (with even more training) or martial arts (with still more training). Failing all that training, pepper spray (with some training) isn't too bad depending on the device you get.

Also, it's always better to use any self-defense device by surprise rather than threatening someone with it. The assailant is less likely to have a defense prepared if he doesn't think you have anything.

Maybe we could miniaturize this device so that it fits inside one of those spendy carbon fiber biometric wallets http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/02/biometric_walle_1.html If a goon opens it without first applying the correct thumb he gets optically stunned for his trouble. Improved models could add a puff of OC spray, a 50kv stun gun charge, and a cellphone/GPS combo that rings up 9-1-1 to report a mugger in need of succor and arrest. "Mugger Mines" anyone?

"Besides: "Recovery time ranges from seconds to 20 minutes" -- not very reliable."

Reliable enough. Main purpose is to stun the person, or people, and allow your control forces to move in on thm. Give a group a few seconds of time where you can not defend against them and you are in deep dodo.

No the patent definatly says "non monochramatic" and gives a broad frequency range of wavelength.

The problem with lasers and peoples eyes is they give comparativly little stun compared to the energy level. Therefor lasers will burn holes in you retina without making you even blink (which is one reason to use them in opthalmic surgery).

Look at the patent link I gave and judge for yourself but I'm calling "flash light" on this device plus enough prior art that would have already expired (should anyone have been daft enough to patent it).

Oh and the patent contains sufficient information about the (supposed) inventor so you can track them down.

Maybe time to track down those named on the patent and invite them to defend the granting of the patent.

Obviously you can make one of these with the aformentioned 1 million candle power flash lights you could/can buy at many "motor accessory" stores.

The principle it uses is to take an intense light source and focus it into a sufficiently parallel light beam (ie colomnate). They have chosen to do it the cheap cheerfull way with a parabolic reflector.

With a little effort and a trip to your loacal telescope or SLR camera store you could come up with a better colomnator in a handy shoulder mount tube design. Call it a "light rifle".

The only problem with this is somebody is going to say "Now why stop there?", and go on to say "Just mount it on top of a rifle so when the perp blinks you have a nice still target you can pull the trigger on!".

This has been falsely claimed many times in the past. Certainly a very bright light will have effects on people, but there is no magical stun effect caused by a particular wavelength or flash pattern. People will naturally pause for a moment when unexpectedly blinded, but this is not exactly a novel finding. Blinding people is certainly an effective way to reduce their combat effectiveness, but again, I don't think that's exactly news either.

I used to know a sound engineer many years ago who was totaly blind and had been since birth.

He did all the normal things growing up including kicking a ball around.

Well he got married and had kids who when they got to a certain age kicked a ball around.

If they played during the day the kids would win some of the time, but at night with the garden lights out he used to beat them hands down.

Sometimes what might normaly be thought of as a disadvantage will under different circumstances be an advantage.

Irespective of being able to out kick his kids at football, he could hear things the rest of us could not. And it would show in odd ways, such as knowing that it was going to rain soon even though the sun was still shining.

We already know that people can be trained to function immediately after a flash-bang grenade blast. Not everyone will be stunned by a light blaster. It may overload retinal nerves, but it does not prevent motor responses. Blasting light into an armed person's face may 'trigger' an unwanted response such as spraying the area with bullets. There are few situations in which such a device would be useful. It would become yet another tool (such as flash-bangs and Tasers) abused by law enforcement folks.

> One of the reasons the are so hated
> is that they were set up to make a
> profit, in that the Met Police have
> been known to sell the photographs
> and attendant personal details to
> various private security concernces,
> which were then used as "psudo
> evidence" against the people to try
> and effect their livelyhood,
> liberty and assets.

Seems unlikely, what's the evidence?

If evidence, was it a rogue insider, or a commercial norm?

OK I shall assume you mean the 'FIT'.

The 'FIT's are likely disliked by many because of their Big Brother overtones, which is disquieting or threatening while exercising ones civil rights, especially of protest.

The FIT's are certainly despised by a minority because FIT's have occasionally abused their power to assault and unlawfully detain innocent members of the public, some of which are documented here:

Seriously, it isn't something I'd depend on - it's far too easy to defend against, and while "The typical response is for the person to freeze." may be accurate, training in blindfighting isn't that uncommon.

Honestly, if blinded, while I'd be more vulnerable (particularly at range or after a significant duration), I'd also be more dangerous to someone poorly trained up close - because I'd have fewer choices on how to disable an opponent effectively (i.e. I couldn't be "nice"), and less indications that they weren't planning to kill me. While this would give an overwhelming advantage for someone who is well-trained, I'm not clear that it would be useful enough to bother keeping on hand.

Overall, I'd advise pepper spray instead. No it's not perfect, but it's harder to countermeasure against (or do you really eat lots of spicy food just on the off chance you'll be hit some day?), and has more effects than essential blindness.

Yes, prior art. The reason why cops pull up behind you at night the way they do.
I want one to install on computer monitors. When a user messes up, flash in their eyes. It should cut down on service calls to IT due to PEBKAC.....;)
But what would work in server rooms?

Way back when, there was a flashlight like device (I think it was in "the complete spy" published before the 1990s). It contained a flashbulb. A flashbulb contains fine magnesium or something that burns brightly so when even a little electricity goes through, there is a very bright flash similar to a xenon strobe. The one for this device was big and packed densely, but it was basically a stun device.